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Nellie Wong
|birth_place = Oakland, California]] |death_date = |death_place = |death_cause = |resting_place = |resting_place_coordinates = |residence = |nationality = American |other_names = |known_for = |education = |alma_mater = |employer = |occupation = poet |home_town = |title = |salary = |networth = |height = |weight = |term = |predecessor = |successor = |party = |boards = |religion = |spouse = |partner = |children = |parents = |relatives = |signature = |website = |footnotes = }} Nellie Wong (born September 12, 1934) was an American poet and activist for feminist and socialist causes. Life Wong was born in Oakland, California to Chinese immigrants. Her father had immigrated to Oakland in 1912. During World War II, her family worked in a grocery store in Berkeley, California. The internment of her Japanese American neighbors left a profound impact on her intellectual development, sensitizing her to issues of racism and the concerns of Asian Americans. The family borrowed $2,000 to start a restaurant, The Great China, in Oakland's Chinatown, where Wong worked as a waitress during her youth.Li Keng Wong, Chinatown Oral History. Web, May 16, 2013. She attended public school, graduating from Oakland High chool, and started bull work as a secretary for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, a position she held until 1982. She later served as senior analyst in affirmative action at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). While in her mid-30s, Wong began studying creative writing at San Francisco State University (SFSU) and began to write and publish her poetry. Wong credits her feminist classmates at SFSU with encouraging her writing. A male professor had once told her to throw away an angry poem she had written. One classmate told her, "You don't have to listen to him!" While a student at SFSU, Wong was involved with the campus Women Writers Union, which organized around issues of race, sex, and class. There she encountered members of 2 affiliated socialist feminist organizations, Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party, and within a few years had joined their ranks. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Wong co-founded the Asian American feminist literary and performance group Unbound Feet. The group, which also included the lesbian poet, educator, and activist Merle Woo, performed at colleges, universities and community centers. In 1983, Wong traveled to China on the first U.S. Women Writers Tour to China sponsored by the US-China Peoples Friendship Association along with Tillie Olsen, Alice Walker, Paule Marshall, and others. During the 1980s and 1990s, Wong was keynote speaker at many national and regional conferences, including Third World Women and Feminist Perspectives, Women Against Racism, and the National Women's Studies Association. She has recited her poetry in China, in Cuba, and throughout the U.S. She has also participated on panels concerning labor, Asian American literature, and poetry. Furthermore, Wong has taught women's studies at the University of Minnesota and poetry writing at Mills College in Oakland, California. She served many years as the Bay Area organizer of the Freedom Socialist Party, and was active with the party, Radical Women, and Bay Area United Against War. She resided in San Francisco. In 1981, Wong participated with Mitsuye Yamada in a documentary film, Mitsuye & Nellie: Asian American poets, produced by Allie Light and Irving Saraf. The film recounts the experiences and hardships that affected the writers and their families. Significant to the film's focus is how World War II and the bombing of Pearl Harbor encouraged divisive perceptions of Japanese as "bad" Asians, while the Chinese were seen as "good" Asians. "Can't Tell," a poem Wong recites in the film, highlights the author's attempt to understand why her Japanese neighbors were being sent to internment camps when she and her family, as Chinese Americans, were considered patriotic citizens. The film also shows lively exchanges between Wong and her siblings, highlighting the feistiness of her older sister, Li Keng, also an author, and her youngest sister, Flo Oy Wong, an installation artist. Her brother, William Wong, is a journalist and the author of Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America. Writing Wong's debutt collection of poetry, Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park (1977), went through 4 printings and was the most successful release in the history of Kelsey Street Press. Other titles are The Death of Long Steam Lady (1986) and Stolen Moments (1997). Her work has appeared in approximately 200 anthologies and publications. Wong writes directly from her working life; she states "A lot of my poems come from the workplace; that's where I've experienced a great deal of sexism and racism." Other themes include her family history and Asian American identity, about which she has said, "I care about the roots of Asian American culture and how and why they came here ... It's something every Asian family has experienced." Her poetry spans issues of feminism, the fight against racism, workplace injustice, and finding identity as a writer and activist. Recognition Excerpts from 2 of her poems have been permanently installed as plaques at public sites at the San Francisco Municipal Railway. She has received awards from the Women's Foundation (San Francisco), University of California, Santa Barbara's Asian American Faculty and Staff Association, and the San Francisco-based Kearny Street Workshop, a multidisciplinary art collective. Publications Poetry *''Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park: Poems''. Berkeley, CA: Kelsey St. Press, 1977. ISBN 0-932716-14-8 *''The Death of Long Steam Lady''. Los Angeles: West End Press, 1984. ISBN 0-931122-42-2 *''Stolen Moments''. Goshen, CT: Chicory Blue Press, 1997. *''Breakfast Lunch Dinner: Poems''. San Francisco: Meridien Press Works, 2012. Non-fiction *''3 Asian American Writers Speak Out on Feminism'' (with Merle Woo & Mitsuye Yamada). San Francisco: SF Radical Women, 1979?; Seattle, WA: Radical Women Publications, 2003. ISBN 0-9725403-5-0 Edited *''Voices of Color: Reports from the front lines of resistance by radicals of color'' (edited with Yolanda Alaniz). Seattle, WA: Red Letter Press, 1999. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Nellie Wong, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Apr. 29, 2015. Audio / video *''Mitsuye and Nellie: Asian American poets'' (VHS, with Mitsuye Yamada). New York: Women Make Movies, 1981. See also *Asian-American poets *List of U.S. poets References *Helen Gilbert, "Nellie Wong," Voices from the Gaps, 2003, University of Minnesota. Web, Apr. 18, 2007. * The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. Edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000). * Review of Stolen Moments. Reviewed by Cindy Lum. Hawaii Pacific Review. Volume 13 (1999), Hawaii Pacific University, Honolulu, HI. * Revolutionary Spirits: Profiles of Asian Pacific American Activists, by Dana Kawaoka, American Studies Senior Thesis, June 1, 1998. * Mitsuye & Nellie, Asian American Poets. Allie Light & Irving Saraf. Women Make Movies. 1981. 58 min. * On Women Turning 60: Embracing the Age of Fulfillment. Interviews and photography by Cathleen Rountree (New York: Harmony Books, 1997). * Women: Images and Realities, A Multicultural Anthology. Edited by Amy Kesselman, Lily D. McNair, Nancy Schniedewind (Mountain View, CA:, Mayfield Publishing Company, 1995). * A Formal Feeling Comes. Edited by Annie Finch (Brownsville, OR: Story Line Press, 1994). * Asian American Literature: An Annotated Bibliography. Edited by King-kok Cheung and Stan Yogi. (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1988). * Guide to Women's Literature throughout the World. Edited by Claire Buck (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1994). * Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975. Edited by Barbara J. Love (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2006). Fonds Her papers are housed at the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives.Nellie Wong Papers at UCSB * Notes External links ;Poems *Nellie Wong poem ("Mama Come Back") at the Academy of American Poets *"One for the Birds" at Outlaw Poetry *"Under Our Own Wings" at Poetrying. *Three Poems by Nellie Wong at Big Bridge ;Audio / video *Nellie Wong at YouTube ;Books *Nellie Wong at Amazon.com ;About *Nellie Wong b. 1934 at the Poetry Foundation *Nellie Wong at Voices from the Gaps ;Etc. *Nellie Wong papers at University of California Santa Barbara Library Category:1934 births Category:Living people Category:American academics Category:Asian-American movement activists Category:American feminists Category:American socialists Category:American writers of Chinese descent Category:American poets of Asian descent Category:Feminist writers Category:People from Oakland, California Category:American women activists of Asian descent Category:Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area Category:20th-century poets Category:20th-century women writers Category:American poets Category:American women writers Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Women poets Category:Chinese-American poets